Report: iOS 6 Maps is data-efficient compared to predecessor

The new Maps app uses 80% less data in standard view, 50% less in satellite.

In the face of negative press about iOS 6's new Maps app, a bit of detective work by mobile app producer Onavo has unearthed a positive tidbit of news. The company says that iOS 6's Maps app uses considerably less data than its Google-powered predecessor—in fact, Onavo claims the much-maligned Apple Maps is "up to five times more efficient" than the previous incarnation.

The increase in efficiency appears to come primarily from Apple's reliance on vector graphics in "Standard" view, rather than a discrete set of tiled bitmaps like Google Maps. A bitmap is an actual image file with a native resolution and a fixed number of pixels; when zoomed in, it gets blurry or pixelated because new details cannot be created. A map with multiple zoom levels must have one set of bitmaps for each individual zoom level, which for a very large data set like Google Maps can mean lots and lots of data. Vector graphics, though, are based on mathematically defined curves and lines. They stay sharp at any zoom level, because a vector curve can be re-calculated and re-drawn as needed.

When you zoom in and out with Google Maps, even in standard view, new tiles are downloaded and displayed at each zoom level. Apple Maps on iOS 6, though, doesn't have to pull an entire new set of tiles down—it just re-draws the curves and lines as needed for the new zoom level, remaining sharp and crisp. Onavo's tests indicate that an average download for a Google Maps zoom was about 1.3MB, whereas the same operation with iOS 6's Apple Maps was only 271KB.

Onavo indicates that the data savings extends to satellite view as well, with iOS 6 showing about a 50 percent reduction in bandwidth over Google Maps, though the company doesn't speculate as to why. It's likely that iOS 6 uses a level of image compression tailored for display on iPhone "retina" screens; if so, this is another area where Apple's notoriously tight control of the end-to-end ecosystem can eke out benefits that more open systems like Android can't match.

For Wi-Fi users, the data savings are nice, but not terribly important, since a quick Wi-Fi network will deliver a megabyte in about an eyeblink's time. The reduction in data becomes very important, though, for cellular users. The smaller size is nice from a speed standpoint for folks in 3G (or, heaven forbid, EDGE) areas, but the real bonus is in shaving megabytes off of the per-month cellular data usage counter. If you're a heavy user of your phone's mapping application, an 80% reduction in the amount of data it uses could free up a whole lot of megabytes for other things.

The increase in efficiency appears to come primarily from Apple's reliance on vector graphics in "Standard" view, rather than a discrete set of tiled bitmaps like Google Maps. A bitmap is an actual image file with a native resolution and a fixed number of pixels; when zoomed in, it gets blurry or pixelated because new details cannot be created. A map with multiple zoom levels must have one set of bitmaps for each individual zoom level, which for a very large data set like Google Maps can mean lots and lots of data.

...

When you zoom in and out with Google Maps, even in standard view, new tiles are downloaded and displayed at each zoom level. Apple Maps on iOS 6, though, doesn't have to pull an entire new set of tiles down—it just re-draws the curves and lines as needed for the new zoom level, remaining sharp and crisp. Onavo's tests indicate that an average download for a Google Maps zoom was about 1.3MB, whereas the same operation with iOS 6's Apple Maps was only 271KB.

Hell, isn't this exactly what the promoted comments are for? A bunch of us have clearly stated that it was only Apple's old Maps backed with Google data that was inefficient, not Google's actual mapping service.

Most tests I've seen show Apple's Maps to be MORE accurate than their iOS 5 counterparts, but be less likely to "guess" (sometimes correctly) on limited data. Thus, the iOS 6 maps is more likely to produce technically accurate but less helpful results, while iOS 5 is more likely to lead you astray, but always has an opinion.

The *REAL* benefit of vector maps on wireless, though, is the same few megabytes of on-phone cached maps will get you vast amounts of area coverage. If you lose your signal, you're probably going to navigate 100 miles before you run off the edge of the map. With Google it was more like 1 mile.

I tried using Google Maps on an old PDA w/ wifi. I could get my map while hooked to wifi, but when I stopped wifi connection to save battery the map would blank out. Not sure if it was a pda program idiocy or a google maps idiocy, but it made google maps about as useful as a tick on a dog's ass on it.

Here's Google's big chance to show all those iOS users what they would've done, if only Apple wasn't holding them back.

Turns out the answer is...

Add Street View to their web app! Impressive.

...or they already shown what they could do with Google Maps on android? Vector mapping since 2010, 3d buildings since 2011, offline rerouting in navigation mode.......\

I'm going to guess that apple won't allow google to create an apple app that is going to be comparable to android google maps. It's not in their interest to do so. They want to force as many people as possible to use iOS6 maps to collect data and improve their maps asap.

Yes, all those features exist in Android. Explain how this helps iOS users, because right now we get a web app with none of those features and a lot of mixed signals as to whether Google will bother making a native app or not.

As to your assertion that Apple will ban Google maps, is there a single instance of Apple banning a maps app? There's an article right on the front page all about alternative maps on the App Store.

I don't have a problem with Google using their maps as a competitive advantage for Android, I'm just sick of armchair quarterbacks telling me about all the amazing things Google would do on iOS if only mean old Apple would let them. As far as I can tell, there's nothing to stop Google except Google's own interests.

Seriously, the power of the "echo chamber" reached a level I haven't seen before on tech stories when it comes to Apple's iOS 6 map app.

If anyone stops and thinks about it for a minute they'd realize that any story on this issue has basically been a few anecdotal examples of information usually in a void. There are some legitimate gripes like the lack of transit info, but this "bad data" thing seems WAY overblown. Someone above mentioned the search biases that are a far more plausible --and fixable, BTW-- explanation for why some people are distressed on the differences in their day to day map use. In fact, the one more measured study that showed problems in Ontario, Canada is what ended up (indirectly) bringing about the search result discoveries.

Anecdote: China iPhone users are apparently ecstatic about how great the data is in iOS 6 maps.

The end result here has great potential, though. Apple has been forced to make very real and some public efforts to improve iOS maps quickly. That is going to be good for everyone, IMO.

Clearly it will not be good for iPhone users. They lost the wealth of information that only Google has. China situation is unique because for China maps Apple used the largest Chinese map data provider (and not data from Tom Tom). Also I suspect that it'll take a while before Chinese government allows Google to use their Google cars in the country. So, iPhone will have good basic maps for China and nothing else. iPhone owners in free countries on the other hand stand to lose a lot (well, they already did) because no other company in the World has the means of collecting data that Google has.

shaving a few MB from my monthly bill (actually having more to spend otherwise) is nice but it is nothing compared to the increased usability in slow 3G and all those abundant EDGE areas. Have you actually travelled around the states using maps in a car? or just for fun in the city?

For Wi-Fi users, the data savings are nice, but not terribly important, since a quick Wi-Fi network will deliver a megabyte in about an eyeblink's time.

A megabyte does not deliver in "an eyeblink" on any connection. That is about 50 megabits, almost twice as fast as a good 802.11g wifi network. And you need to add latency on top of whatever speed they have, which with google maps is really bad... because it doesn't just happen once - it happens once for every map tile.

Even if you have gigabit fibre hard wired right into the back of your 32 core workstation, google maps still won't change zoom level in "an eyeblink" unless you're right next door to google's datacentre. iOS 6 is dramatically faster than google maps, over any connection.

Since iOS doesn't need to fetch new tiles when you zoom, it continues to use the old data, usually sending zero network requests after a zoom change, the reality is iOS 6 maps can zoom in faster than the human brain can perceive, while google maps can take up to half a second to show the new zoom level.

Also, smaller map data means whatever caching they have is more effective. So it's less likely to need to download map data, assuming they allocated the same amount of disk space to caching (I haven't been able to find any information about how much caching Apple does, but they do appear to do some).

How would image compression be "tailored" or a higher res screen in such a way as to save more data magically? You either compress images more or less with lossy compression. There's nothing magical about the retina display other than it being high-resolution. Certainly if you want things to look better at higher resolution, you'd use less compression, with bigger files?

The explanation this article gives makes no sense. My guess is one of three possibilities:

(a) a fully custom compression scheme. Unlikely because this is an area that has been so worked over it's hard to imagine Apple can add real value.

(b) using a better (but standard) compression scheme, eg JPEG2000.

(c) something between those two extremes, tailored to the data set. For example, given the huge corpus of satellite imagery, one could calculate the optimal KL transform for color separation, rather than relying on the standard YUV transform. One could also omit some of the metadata overhead in JPEG2000 and have that the server is always serving up 128x128 (or whatever) sized tiles in one particular format of the various JPEG2000 options.

It's amazing to me that some people are SO partisan in their view of the world that they can't see that many things such as this are tradeoffs.…In other words, people are unfair based on their own biases AND they are incredibly short-sighted.

Maybe you haven't been following the Apple threads here very long. Apple-bashers have been complaining that Apple introduces TOO MANY software innovations, and has been doing TOO MANY 1.0 apps.

Maps is just another example of Apple innovation run amok. Why can't Apple settle down and use a service developed by others, even if it's a crippleware ad for a competitor — turn-by-turn prohibited, no 3D — and the vendor has been raising users' prices while plastering ads and abusing customers' (especially, iPhone users') privacy rights? Apple has just lost its ability to say “no” to true innovation.

I know you've seen all those complaints, and never a counter one that Apple's control freakishness prevents them from doing anything new.

So this is what passes for technology "discussion" these days? Lee brings up some interesting technical points about data compression and the response is a three page bitchfest from a whole bunch of people (most of who don't actually own an iPhone) about how iOS maps sucks, along with some incoherent responses about how nothing should ever be reported anywhere ever if it has been done before.

But fsckall discussion about the actual issue at hand, numbers comparing Android vs iOS6 data usage, or the state of the art in overhead imagery codecs.

Pathetic. Utterly pathetic. I could get more insight into technology by holding a discussion with the drunk frat brothers of Delta Delta Delta.

The explanation this article gives makes no sense. My guess is one of three possibilities:

(a) a fully custom compression scheme. Unlikely because this is an area that has been so worked over it's hard to imagine Apple can add real value.

(b) using a better (but standard) compression scheme, eg JPEG2000.

(c) something between those two extremes, tailored to the data set. For example, given the huge corpus of satellite imagery, one could calculate the optimal KL transform for color separation, rather than relying on the standard YUV transform. One could also omit some of the metadata overhead in JPEG2000 and have that the server is always serving up 128x128 (or whatever) sized tiles in one particular format of the various JPEG2000 options.

All true (I'd go with b) because it's trivial to implement and should give some nice improvements), but all these things are hardware independent and would work just as fine on any android/windows phone/whatever.

Tbh I'm more insulted that the author actually thought the readership wouldn't notice such an obviously flawed argument than that he actually included some fantasies in a presumably objective article.. though obviously further articles will be considered quite sceptically.

There is one great advantage for Luddites like me who use Maps on a Wi-Fi only device (iPad, iPod): once I have explored my neighborhood or a planned route online, the maps persist nicely when on the road and so off-line. I am testing whether I can "buffer" my whole home city with a bit of browsing at high enlargement.

That's a win for vector tiles in place of bitmaps I suppose. For me as a resident of a major city, it works quite well, but when I explore a proposed road-trip, the data gaps are noticeable. So the next step is for Apple to spend some of its 100 billion on improving the base map data.

Except for the small fact that iOS has never, ever had Google Maps. Google Maps has never existed on iOS before. It has *always* been Apple Maps. This is important because it has *always* been Apple's app. The data came from Google, yes, but it was not Google Maps, it was not written by Google, and it was not in any way controlled by Google.

Partially true, the old Maps app was written and maintained by Apple, but Google's terms on the data absolutely did control what Apple could do with it. Google's standard terms do not allow vector-based maps nor turn-by-turn directions, both of which were of course key features of Android's Google Maps. Control over Maps on iOS is exactly why Apple went their own way in iOS6. We can argue about whether or not Apple could have come to terms with Google on a special arrangement for use of their mapping API, but none of us really know what Apple's options were. It absolutely makes sense that Apple went their own way.

Perhaps it was too early for Apple to switch to their own mapping data, but realistically, the only way to practically improve it after a certain point is to expose it to users. In my own experience over the last couple of weeks driving up and down the US's Eastern Seaboard, the new Maps app is no less accurate than the old one. I think it's probably similar for most Americans. But it sounds like the situation is worse in other countries, and I understand the disappointment of those who were regular users of StreetView and transit directions. Still, I think this, like the antenna issue, has been overblown and the criticisms propagated most by those who aren't affected by it and instead form their opinions based on hearsay.

Yeah, I think Apple Maps rocks. I've had great experience with the turn by turn navigation, and really like the vector view. I've certainly read a lot of the media pile on, but it doesn't fit with my personal experience. I also understand that while the coverage is slim for some regions, in others, i.e., China, it is far superior to Google's. And I'm sure it will get better and better with time.

This is important because it has *always* been Apple's app. The data came from Google, yes, but it was not Google Maps, it was not written by Google, and it was not in any way controlled by Google.

You're wrong. Google did control the map.

If you have a look at the license agreement for google's map data, they go into extreme depth defining precisely what you can and cannot do with the data. They even tell you exactly how implement features like caching to avoid excessive data use. And unless you follow everything perfectly, they will pull your access without giving you any notice why.

Google's contract with Apple is private, so we don't know exactly what is in it. But if it is anything like the one Google gives to everybody else, then Google absolutely did control what was in the app.

I'm surprised no is talking about of the most glaring omissions in Apple Maps: traffic. Google Maps provides highly accurate, real-time traffic data for all highways and most major surface streets. Roads are colored either green, yellow, red, or black/red to indicate the level of traffic congestion. Apple Maps only indicates major traffic jams on highways and gives little indication about how far back the jam impacts traffic flow. Google Maps also provides an order of magnitude more notices indicating slowing, collisions, stalled cars, road work, etc.

For those living in Los Angles (and other major cities I presume), live traffic is an essential feature. Right now, my commute on the 405 shows no traffic disturbances on Apple Maps while Google Maps shows mostly yellow, with a little bit of red and a little green. I use this feature every day to decide between several routes home. In this regard, Apple Maps is completely useless!

On the compression:Apple actually compresses pngs to a proprietary format for iOS apps that's actually incompatible with libpng and the png spec. They're generally smaller then the most optimized pngs stripping out all the un-needed data that isn't used, and precomputing the alpha to allow a faster and optimized data load for OpenGL. (This is something that Xcode's will do for you automatically by default)

I don't see why they wouldn't do the same thing to a jpeg implementation, or whatever the ideal image format is for satellite views.

On the bitmap vs tile vectors:I'm disappointed with

Quote:

Apple's notoriously tight control of the end-to-end ecosystem can eke out benefits that more open systems like Android can't match

from the article. As everyone has pointed out, this is a case of Apple trying to match a 2 year old Android feature-set. If anything, Apple's notoriously tight control prevented this benefit from being available to them in 2010, 2011 and most of 2012.

For all we know, if Apple had just allowed an official Google Maps by Google app to be the preload rather then the non-branded Maps, they may have had vector maps in iOS 4. And then may be not. Part of the fun of being on forums is we can make up shit on whats going on behind closed door boardroom meetings.

I like the vector approach, though I wonder if that has an impact on accuracy (not the accuracy you are thinking of.) How do they maintain changes and does that make it easier or harder to implement map changes? As roads and locations change, does the vector approach make them slower to appear or faster?

On the Satellite view, I've found the Apple Satellite views to be blurry compared to comparable Google Maps imaging. Not sure if the compression has something to do with that but it doesn't look great when you zoom in.

Vector graphics are basically a 3D model of the world very accurate mathematically, certainly more accurate than bitmaps, the most important part is to have the vector portion which is the backbone of the map along with the user interface and software api's (these three items have to be done first), all other data satellite bitmaps or the location of individual places on the map school, hotel etc, can be put on later, what Apple did behind the scenes in regards to the vector graphics, software api's, and user interface will determine how fast data can be inserted into the map and how fast improvements can be made.

I read this on another site yesterday, and many commenters were pointing out that this is valid only for iOS5 Google Maps vs. iOS6 Maps, since Google Maps for Android already uses vector graphics and has used it for some time. Can you confirm?

Another relevant point is that, regardless of data efficiency, Google Maps for Android allows you to cache huge maps for offline use, so you can use GPS guidance even without data coverage or with data turned off.

Apple can optimize their entire system get better performance i.e. A5, A6 CPU's, the GPU iPad 2,3, iPhone 4, 4s, 5, in time there will be no comparison Apple (even with more data on the map) and other map programs.

I read this on another site yesterday, and many commenters were pointing out that this is valid only for iOS5 Google Maps vs. iOS6 Maps, since Google Maps for Android already uses vector graphics and has used it for some time. Can you confirm?

Another relevant point is that, regardless of data efficiency, Google Maps for Android allows you to cache huge maps for offline use, so you can use GPS guidance even without data coverage or with data turned off.

Downloading large amount of data on a cell phone is still not a good thing to do over time, that why most people will end up using the 2D vector view without bit maps (sat info, 3D stuff) 95% of the time.

Why is this a surprise? Apple's map app lacks the sheer amount of data provided to the user by Google's map app, so of course it's going to be more "data-efficient", if you want to stick with the spin way of putting it.

Not true, the vector models underneath (what can't be seen) can very different in size and scale.

If Apple had let Google throw in the features they wanted, users probably would have had vector based maps a long time ago.

Also, when the heck did Google Maps get the ability to go through floors of a building?! I was just toying around with Maps on my N7 for vector fun and zoomed in on the City Hall building in Boston that gave me the numbers 1-9 on the side. As I clicked each one a floor dropped on top of the building and new data was shown on it.

Sure, Google could have let Apple add the very useful features from Google Maps on Android and other platforms to iOS. But at what cost? What did Google want in exchange?

Forget the financial/licensing cost - we all know that Apple is sitting on cash money than most countries. But what did Google want from Apple? More prominent branding in the app (maybe they wanted the app renamed from Maps to Google Maps)? The ability to display ads (like in the new Google created YouTube app for iOS)? The ability to mine more information from iOS users? In any situation,if Apple kept Google as it's mapping provider, Apple would be continuing to strengthen a key feature on the mobile devices for it's chief competitor. They would be making Android stronger, while not perhaps receiving equal benefits. That logic also extends to why Nokia and Microsoft Maps weren't options either.

In the end, Apple decided to do what they did - develop their own mapping service, a decision years in the making based on some of Apple's acquisitions over the past few years. If there is one consistent theme in Apple's history, they don't like to be held by the balls by anyone. Safari, iWork, MobileMe/iCloud, FireWire, the new Lightning Port, and iTunes are all examples of products allowing Apple to control every aspect of the user experience and their own destiny. Developing Apple Maps was the right call, and while not up to the standard of Google Maps, will get better in time.

Eventually Google will release Maps for iOS, and will be able to mine information and sell ads to their hearts content, while providing users with all of the information they are used to. And in the meantime, if Apple Maps aren't up to your standards, use one of the dozens of alternative mapping apps in the App Store.

Maps works very well on a 4s and a iPad 2, Apple doesn't need Google maps as a app in the Appstore let Google work thru the web, after all they are a direct competitor.

I read this on another site yesterday, and many commenters were pointing out that this is valid only for iOS5 Google Maps vs. iOS6 Maps, since Google Maps for Android already uses vector graphics and has used it for some time. Can you confirm?

Another relevant point is that, regardless of data efficiency, Google Maps for Android allows you to cache huge maps for offline use, so you can use GPS guidance even without data coverage or with data turned off.

I was hoping someone would say this. It's very important to make the distinction between the "Google Maps" that was included with iOS versions prior to iOS6 and the "Google Maps" that ships with Android.

They're entirely different animals, and this article doesn't do much of anything to make that clear, IMHO. Reading through it, it would be very easy to assume that "Google Maps" also includes the Android version, which is not the case.

Google Maps for Android has been using vector graphics for quite a while - since 2010, if I recall - and it would make a meaningful comparison to contrast Apple Maps data usage with the usage for Google Maps for Android.

EDIT: Ah, good. A LOT of people are noting this.

Quote:

It's likely that iOS 6 uses a level of image compression tailored for display on iPhone "retina" screens; if so, this is another area where Apple's notoriously tight control of the end-to-end ecosystem can eke out benefits that more open systems like Android can't match.

If anything, what this means is that Apple's app uses less compression, assuming it's a lossy routine. Compression artifacts are more likely to show on a higher-resolution display, and you'd have to dial back the compression to hide them. But the last part of this paragraph makes no sense at all. The level of image compression is something you dial in using an existing routine. It's simply a design choice in the app's imaging routines and the source data. Google could dial in whatever level of compression they want for the Android version. How then do you get to "... benefits that more open systems like Android can't match"? Closed- or Open-systems has exactly zero to do with it.

It's funny how lots of people seem to just assume that _everything_ on iOS Maps is inaccurate. Come on, just because you have seen a couple of screenshots on the web (and probably never used it yourself) doesn't mean the whole thing is flawed. I have been using it since it was made available on my 4S and while it's definitely not yet as good as Google's, the accuracy in my case has been well over 90% (and I am being very conservative here).

Agreed. While missing key things like Baker Street, Notting Hill Gate and Tottenham Court road tube stations is very (very) bad it is right for most things.

I'm very disappointed in you, Ars. As people have previously mentioned, Google Maps on Android has had this functionality for almost two years. This article not only suggests that Apple has a completely new feature, but goes as far as to say it's an "area where Apple's notoriously tight control of the end-to-end ecosystem can eke out benefits that more open systems like Android can't match". Please see the following:

It's for reasons like this that I want to condone calling them AppleTechnica, despite my own knowing that it's a fanboyish thing to do... But I really, really want to now.

Yesterday, while talking about browser statistics, Peter Bright said that Safari was so much higher in the usage stats for mobile browsers even though there are more Android devices because Android tablets suck and can't match the quality of the iPad.

Really?

Yes, most people who have Android phones in the world use them as feature (dumb) phones. And Webkit is a Apple fork of KTML, which Google was happy to use, like Amazon and Samdung forked Android.

While reading the article, at first glance, it looks like that the maps on IOS5 were provided by Google and maps on IOS6 are being provided by Apple. Which in turn makes it look that Google maps were inferior to Apple maps. However, the reality at least according to comments is different:

1. Google provided data not maps on IOS52. Google has had vector graphics since 2010.

Correct me if I am wrong.

It really seems that Ars is turning into a complete Apple nuthugging site. When one reads an article and then reads the comments and comes out more informed due to the comments than the article, it's probably time for the author to pack it in and look for a different line of work.

Quote:

It's likely that iOS 6 uses a level of image compression tailored for display on iPhone "retina" screens; if so, this is another area where Apple's notoriously tight control of the end-to-end ecosystem can eke out benefits that more open systems like Android can't match.

This kind of statement is just baffling for a tech site. This kind of conjecture needs to at least indicate which image compression algorithm is supposedly not available on "open systems like Android". It sounds like something you'd read on CNN.

Not unless you work at Google or Apple you would not know the compression, but might be able to track the amount info in bytes being downloaded phone by using a program to do so. Apple controls the OS, A5, A6, the GPU, Apple can optimize in a way that Google will not be able to.

Out of interest, how come maps.google.com is still stuck in bitmap land? If Android has had a better, vector map for nearly 3 years, why hasn't Google brought the improvements to every user of Google Maps? Is there some technical reason?

Out of interest, how come maps.google.com is still stuck in bitmap land? If Android has had a better, vector map for nearly 3 years, why hasn't Google brought the improvements to every user of Google Maps? Is there some technical reason?

It is vector based... do you mean the satellite view? That will always be bitmapped because it is photography.

Out of interest, how come maps.google.com is still stuck in bitmap land? If Android has had a better, vector map for nearly 3 years, why hasn't Google brought the improvements to every user of Google Maps? Is there some technical reason?

It is vector based... do you mean the satellite view? That will always be bitmapped because it is photography.

It doesn't appear to be for me - it still looks like tile-based bit maps for the standard view (both desktop and mobile versions). However, if I'm wrong and it is vector, it's really, really badly done!

I have to say one of the reasons that I still love Ars after all these years is that the writers actually explain what they're talking about. Had this article been on most any other "tech blog" (cough), they wouldn't have bothered to tell the layman what the difference is between raster graphics and vector graphics.

Two points: The satellite imagery in my area is hopeless. You can't even make out houses or streets, just the vague shape of the town. The imagery is quite recent, since you can see the basic shape of a new football stadium. Low resolution satellite imagery would easily explain lower data usage.

Wi-fi users' data rates don't only depend on the wi-fi network. At home, my broadband access is significantly slower than my wi-fi, at about two or three Mb/s. So data usage is significant there, too. Also, when using wi-fi at a conference, for example, there's a possibility that you're sharing a significantly overloaded network. So usage counts there, too.

If Apple had let Google throw in the features they wanted, users probably would have had vector based maps a long time ago.

Also, when the heck did Google Maps get the ability to go through floors of a building?! I was just toying around with Maps on my N7 for vector fun and zoomed in on the City Hall building in Boston that gave me the numbers 1-9 on the side. As I clicked each one a floor dropped on top of the building and new data was shown on it.

I was floored when street view showed me the inside of a restaurant I was looking for. You can walk inside and check out the place. (Not the kitchen to look for cleanliness unfortunately.)

Of course it never looked the same after the Street View Car drove through it, killing 5 in the process.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.